Tuesday, February 5, 2008

FireFox Quickie: keywords can be "smart" as well

Building on my previous FireFox Quickie, keywords in the FireFox browser can be even more useful: by adding "%s" at in the bookmarked URL, you can make them "smart". The "%s"will be replaced with whatever you type after the keyword.

FireFox comes with some built-in smart keywords:

google -> http://www.google.com/search?q=%s

dict-> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s

stock-> http://www.google.com/search?q=stocks:%s

wp-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s

So you can type dict quickie to find a definition of the work quickie :-)

The easiest way to add a smart keyword is to right-click in a search field on a web page and choose “Add a Keyword for this Search.”This will pop up a dialog for you to add a bookmark name and keyword.Now I can search for a word in the Dutch version of Wikipedia by typing "wpn" and the search term(s) in the address bar (pressing CTRL+L will move the cursor to the address bar). For example:will bring me immediately to the Dutch Wikipedia page about Ajax.

Looking at the bookmark Properties, the location that is used is http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciaal:Zoeken?search=%s